365 True Things: 142/Poetry

I've got no inspiration today, so instead I'll give you a poem: what I consider my favorite poem, although of course I have many of those. But this one—it touches my soul deeply. Perhaps because I've been to that part of Ireland. But even more, the final lines. Perfectly capturing the experience of raw wildness.

Once in a painting class, I tried to "paint" this poem. I failed miserably—though I'd like to try again sometime. It needs to be abstract, and it needs the right colors and textures. It needs time (I'm thinking lots of glazing, with oils), which I didn't give it in my last attempt.

So, for today: Seamus Heaney's "Postscript," the final poem in his 1996 collection The Spirit Level.

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

 Photo courtesy of http://dogdaisychains.blogspot.com/2010_03_01_archive.html.

P.S. (fittingly), 2/26/21: While looking for a larger photo to accompany this poem, I found a brief piece from the Irish Times (2013) where Heaney talks about its genesis. "Now and again a poem comes like that, like a ball kicked in from nowhere."